


Snapshot

by TitaniumScorpion



Category: Ghost - Mystery Skulls (Music Video)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2015-03-16
Packaged: 2018-03-18 04:14:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3555629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TitaniumScorpion/pseuds/TitaniumScorpion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lewis and Vivi talk about ex-girlfriends. Lots of headcanons, kinda sloppy due to being written all at once and not having written in a year, pretty fluffy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snapshot

**Author's Note:**

> I've never used AO3 before??? Uhh have a oneshot I guess. Go easy on me lmao....

If Vivi had to pick a place for candidacy as a tiny, self-contained heaven on Earth, Lewis’ room would be pretty damn high up in the running.

It wasn’t just because the sweetest boy in the world lived in it. It wasn’t even for any raunchy reasons, either, though she did have an awful lot of, ahem, fond memories centered there. No, what really put it so high up on the list was that it seemed to not be just a room, but its own realm unto itself, where the stress and static of the outside world couldn’t even touch. The light filtering in through the old, uneven glass of the two perpendicular windows was perpetually caught in the magenta web of rough-cut, thin curtains, combining with the soft pink Christmas lights he used in place of any harsher bulbs to cast an almost dreamlike glow over the room. He dried peppers for use downstairs in the restaurant on one wall, punctuating the warm smell of the lavender sprigs he tucked in his dresser with a slight edge of fire- whether it’s something as simple as capsaicin released from the puckering skins or perhaps the oils seeping into the wood of the house itself, she never really knew. And the scavenged antiques- an old tin car here, a bottle of some out of production soda there- on a shelf above the desk scattered with old school papers, lining a nightstand, even a few standing guard in a corner like some reminder of times gone past…

It was like a museum. But it was a museum maintained not for profit, but for simple love of what it held, a ragtag collection of spice and violet and yesteryear. At first, when they were friends drawn together by the Caliente Curry special, it had seemed ridiculous and farfetched for him to live here, like a bull settling down in a china shop. But she’d teased him about the box of tissues he’d left out, out of place in the almost dated scene- ‘wow, classy, Lewis’- and seen him offer her a confused look and point at the wall of peppers- ‘sometimes I want a snack, and I’m not immune.’ She’d seen him grit his teeth at the sound of fluorescent lights buzzing and how relaxed he looked in the glow of his own little alternative. She’d seen the way he curled when he slept so his parents wouldn’t have to buy a bigger mattress for him, and now that she knows how it feels to fall asleep with his lips against the back of her hair, what it’s like to have him cradle her hands like baby birds that fell from their nest and kiss each of her fingertips, she wondered why she’d ever thought this room could belong to anyone but him.

She was reading for one of her classes at her own agonizingly slow pace, her fingers tracking the tiny area where she could best focus, her head beginning to spin with words and paragraphs when he returned from his shower, dressed simply in a black t-shirt and pajama bottoms, his bangs slicked with water and pressed tight against his forehead. The grime of the day is gone from him now, the smell of sweat and cooking oil replaced with lavender and peppermint, the scent of him almost as much of a comfort as his arms as he joins her on his bed, pulling her close to his chest with a happy sigh. He doesn’t say anything, and that in itself is as comforting as anything he could have possibly said.

It’s remarkable how quickly silence has come to mean comfort to her. 

“I found something for you,” Vivi said, reaching for her bag, tucking away the textbook and ruffling through her folders. He looked on with a gentle inquisitiveness in the way he sat, letting her take her time squinting through her papers, fingertips reading creased edges and paper textures as clearly as another might read ink on paper. She finally settled on a glossy little square, pulling it out with a triumphant little huff.

“I always did like pink,” she said softly, offering it to him. Lewis looked at it for a few moments, his eyes a bit blank and lacking in understanding, before he cautiously reached out for it. She chuckled softly to herself, rolling her eyes. “I wouldn’t be offering it to you if you weren’t meant to look at it. Do you think it’s easy to transport things in a college backpack? Be thankful it isn’t a crumpled up mess by now.”

He shot her a look, a jaded little thing she knew how to read by then, the set of his eyes and the half-cocked smile on his lips- ‘you’re lucky you’re so cute’- and turned his attention to the paper below. He studied it for a little longer than most would at a cursory glance, and finally, his voice throaty and hollow from lack of use, spoke: “Who’s this?”

Vivi leaned over, though she knew exactly who he was talking about, his blocky fingers framing her. The image, slightly blurry, taken on a Polaroid at some forgotten county fair, showed two girls, arm in arm and cheek to cheek, against a backdrop of a Ferris wheel and a row of carnie-run fairground games. One of them was very clearly a younger Vivi, her hair much longer- to her waist, even- and her face rounded with youth, a pink fringe along her bangs and matching glowing jewelry around her neck and wrists. The other was taller, willowier, with big hair and striped coontails hanging near her ears, overdone eye makeup and candy-coloured lips making clear that the glow jewelry was her doing. “That’s Camille,” she said simply.

He turned that same blank look on her, and she sighed melodramatically, giving him a gentle smile. “You know, my phase? Well, not a phase. She was certainly a phase, just not mine. I mean, who the hell dresses scene after the ninth grade, and this was senior year, goddamn.”

“Please speak in words that your idiot boyfriend can understand,” Lewis said softly.

She snickered, throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him lightly. “I don’t think I _have_ an idiot boyfriend. One who doesn’t always follow my weird-ass train of thought, certainly, but far from an idiot. She’s my ex-girlfriend.”

“Oh.” He shrugged, looking indifferent.

Vivi fixes him with a piercing little smirk. “What? No ‘that’s so hot, do you have any nudes of her?’” She rolled over onto her belly, kicking her feet up in the air, toes wiggling in her socks. “That’s what you’re supposed to say, I think. Aren’t boys supposed to follow a script on that sort of thing?”

“Not that… I’m aware of?” How was it possible for one face to look so confused? “Why am I supposed to say that’s hot? She’s your ex, isn’t that disrespectful?”

“Lew, honey, someday you’re going to give me cavities, and I don’t have a dental plan.” His ears pinkened at those words as he stretched out alongside her, him on his back and her on her belly, the Polaroid held gently in his fingers like he’s afraid it’ll disintegrate. “I don’t know, I guess I’m just used to being fetishized when I talk about her. Which is why I don’t, even though we’re still friends. I ain’t even mad.” Vivi shrugged against the blanket, her face serene as her tired eyes fluttered closed. “She’s a sweetheart.”

He was quiet, which was nothing new. Slowly, haltingly, he asked another question, his chest thrumming where it brushed against hers as his voice rattled through his ribcage. “I… Not that I mind that you broke up, and I don’t want to pry, but… why?”

“Why’re we through?” She leaned up on her elbows, meeting his soft gaze, smiling to herself at how clear his face always is in the kaleidoscope that the world was for her. “A lot of reasons, I guess. Mostly the fact that I swung by her place one day unannounced and found her with her hand up another girl’s shirt.”

She couldn’t help but savour the utter shock on his face then, as if he found it impossible to believe that such things could even happen off of a television screen. Perhaps he didn’t. “Wow, I… That’s awful.”

“Eh.” Vivi waved a hand dismissively, gently resting her forehead against his forearm. “It wasn’t so bad, we’d been growing apart anyway. The thing that really got under my skin was when she said she was only trying to understand how it felt for me to go by touch, that was kind of a horrible joke, but-“

“What? She said that to you?” Lewis sat up abruptly, his face an uncharacteristic scowl. “About your eyes? After she did that to you? And you’re still friends with her?”

“Huh? I mean… Yeah?” Her brows were a rumpled little crease of confusion, her head cocked as her hair fell in a soft blue curtain around her, framing her little show of befuddlement. “Honestly, I’ve had so many worse things said to me. I think we were both downright sick of each other and that that came out. I think I said her hair looked like roadkill. It’s no big deal. It’s not as if we spend all day every day together, we just talk, like, once a month on Facebook or whatever. Dude, I live in Colorado and we went to school in New York, we’re not joined at the hip or anything.” Finished with her little tirade, she folded her hands in front of her, laying her chin on them primly.

“Hm.” He settled back down slowly, though the look on her face told her something was still eating him long before his actions did. But it got through to him sure enough, and he stood, leaving her sprawled out as he rummages through his own room. He returns with something that looks very much like something he’d own, a sterling silver picture frame with floral designs cut around it, and hands it to her face-side down- in fact, it looks like it hasn’t been displayed correctly in a long time.

“Lights?” she asked him quietly, and he obliged, plugging in an extra string of them, making the contents of the frame a bit easier to decipher. It held a printed-out instant film shot, lightly bleached with exposure, very clearly having been taken in the restaurant downstairs. A slightly younger Lewis sits at the soda bar, and something in his face… isn’t right. His smile seems more of a grimace, his eyebrows drawn like curtains would be drawn over the windows to a house with something very wrong inside. He’s clearly sitting to accommodate the girl beside him, and she seems almost a parody- short shorts, the neon-green edges of a push-up bra peeking out through her low neckline, her skin the wrong colour tan to be from the sun and her eyeliner pulled from the cover of some tabloid. Nothing in her foxlike smile seems hurt.

For what’s obviously meant to be a photo of a happy occasion, something felt extremely wrong.

She felt a chill sink into her, the humour leaving her in a great whoosh like she was a punctured balloon. She didn’t ask, merely lightly rested her fingertips over the glass and looked up at Lewis. He wasn’t smiling anymore, either.

“That’s Loren,” he said quietly, reaching out to take the photo. It was then that she realized he had never sat back down, waiting for her to be done so he could hide it away again. He held it in a way that meant he wouldn’t risk laying eyes on her, put it in a place amongst his collections that he wouldn’t chance across it while doing some tidying up- this is not a happy memory, not at all.

“Lewis,” she murmured, sitting up on the edge of the bed, nothing at all humorous in her face now. He’d mentioned things in the past, swift little half-sentences of someone who didn’t have his best interests in mind.

Oh, god, he was so bad at saying no.

He sat back down beside her, seeming very young and vulnerable despite his size and strength, those toned arms quivering. Sometimes it was easy to forget he hadn’t yet graduated high school while she was a freshman in college, but right then he seemed very young indeed. He shook his head lightly, bangs sweeping over his eyes.

“I’m not like you with her. We aren’t friends anymore,” he said simply.

“Oh, Lew, you don’t have to be!” All at once she pulled him back into the bed, clutching him close, his hulk of flesh and bone nothing to the raw emotion of a comparatively petite and very protective girlfriend. She could feel a sandpaper lump in her throat, feel the tell-tale firey prickle in the corners of her eyes, and on a level she felt entirely stupid. She hadn’t shed tears for herself for the better part of two years, but the very idea of him, hurt and lost and confused at the hands of this girl, is… It’s not a thought she wants to dwell on. “You’re fine, okay? You cope with things your way and I’ll cope with them mine. You don’t need to apologize for anything.”

He seemed surprised initially at her abrupt grasp, but his arms soon folded around her, his face in the crook of her neck and his breath hot on her collarbone. There was a slight shiver to his shoulders, but it disappeared soon enough, like it was ironed out by their contact.

“I’m just so glad you’re you,” his voice came against her throat, and she let out a soft, slow breath. The past was past, and she couldn’t change it. He’d been burned by this girl, that much was clear, even if she didn’t know how. It didn’t matter. He didn’t need to pick at old scabs and show her how the cuts beneath them happened. He had shown her that the scars were there, a silent plea in his own little Lewisy way to have her care for him, and damn it, she was going to do her best to do that.

She didn’t realize just how caught up in her own little world she’d become until she feels him give a slight snuffle against her, his breathing deep and slow. Vivi smiles down at him, her eyes gentle now, mirth and sadness gone, leaving only the tenderness he so desperately needed.

“… Asleep already, you big dingus?” She must have seriously spaced out there, but he was tired anyway. He needed something to sleep with, and she was there. He needed to have someone see what had happened, and she had been there.

Perhaps she should have said more to him about it, in this strange little moment they had shared, but words never seemed to do much for him. And with the warm weight of him on her, the sweet gentle spice of his hair in her breath, she didn’t feel as if any words in the world would be able to quantify this.

He may have needed someone to help him heal, yes, but she just as much needed someone to simply respect her. And without even being told as much, Lewis had always known exactly how to do that.

There were a lot of open-ended questions and big existential thoughts then, so she shook her head to clear them. Time enough to think about that later, but right then, they were young and beautiful and awake and asleep and perfect. She grabbed her cell phone from the bedside table, opened the camera application, held it above the two of them, and took a quick snapshot.


End file.
